The strength and wildness and will that I found in him were more and better than all the truth and goodness in the world. I pledged myself to him as brother and friend no matter what he'd done and no matter what he was.
Gregory David RobertsTags: friendship-true-and-loyal
The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.
- Karla
Heaped up on the blankets, our bodies bound by weariness and her deep slumber, surrounded by sickness and hope, death and defiance, I touched the soft surrendered curl of Karla's sleeping fingers to my lips, and I pledged my heart to her forever.
Gregory David RobertsA man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another. At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows. Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own. The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where none had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less. And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads. The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose. Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper
Gregory David RobertsTags: shantaram
Every door is a portal leading through time as well as space. The same doorway that leads us into and out of a room also leads us into the past of the room and its ceaselessly unfolding future.
Gregory David RobertsRemember,' Khader said insistently, resting his hand on my forearm to emphasise his words. 'Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong--that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.
Gregory David RobertsHe was the little mouse that I'd trained and fed with crumbs in my prison cell; the mouse that was crucified.
Gregory David RobertsIt's such a huge arrogance to love someone, and there's too much of it around. There's too much love in this world. Sometimes I think that's what heavens is-- a place where everybody's happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.
Gregory David RobertsTags: love true-story love-hurts
I heard a warning, deep within - we usually do , when something worse than we can imagine is stalking us, and set to pounce. Fate’s way of beating us in a fair fight is to give us warnings that we hear, but never heed.
Gregory David RobertsWaiting for nothing, that is what kills the heart of a man, isn’t it?
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